What’s all the bellyaching about? The fact that feature headlines don’t work so well online. Sad, but true: When it comes to web heads, it’s more important to optimize for search engines — and optimize for real people — than it is to be clever.

“Part of the craft of journalism for more than a century has been to think up clever titles and headlines,” writes Ed Canale, vice president for strategy and new media at The Sacramento Bee. “And Google comes along and says, ‘The heck with that.’”

“If there is a choice between boring and useless, I suggest going for boring.”

— Steffen Fjaervik, contributing writer for Poynter Online

“If there is a choice between boring and useless, I suggest going for boring.”

But maybe those aren’t the only options.

Four ways to write creative headlines for the web

Here are three ways to work around the SEO and scanning restrictions of web heads:

1. Use your title tag and URL.

Your title tag gets more Google juice than your web headline. So put your literal headline in the title tag and put the feature headline on the content page. The New York Times, for instance, sometimes packs keywords into its title tags, but not into the page headline.

Put your wit where the reader is … Write a creative headline for humans and put it on your content page. Write an SEO headline for Google and put in your page title.

2. Use the deck.

You could also use the headline for the literal story, the deck for the creative or benefits-focused one.

Literal headline: [Topic word] does what

Benefits-oriented deck: You benefit how

Creative deck: Clever wordplay or twist of phrase

3. Be witty and clear.

You’re brilliant, right? Why not write a headline that’s both creative and telling? The pros are pulling it off by writing:

4. A reversed mullet.

No, there’s no danger that readers will injure themselves in a laughing fit, but these writers do manage to make their headlines both literal and creative.

How to manage all of these headlines

So how do you handle content management with all of these headline options?

Ask the writers to provide headlines and other display copy or microntent and metadata with the stories. Writers understand the story best, after all, and this approach keeps the webmaster from frantically repurposing everything and the end of the process.

And if you are publishing and posting, include the print headline in the web metadata. Print readers will look up the story using the headline they saw in the publication.

Even if it’s not the headline you post on the content or index pages, they should be able to find what they’re looking for.

Lift Ideas Off the Screen

Get the word out, even to nonreaders

More than half of social media followers spend, on average, fewer than 15 seconds on a page, according to a study by Chartbeat. In this environment, you need to get your message across to skimmers, scanners and other nonreaders.

Reach even ‘readers’ who won’t read your paragraphs.

At Get Clicked, Read, Shared & Liked — our two-day hands-on Social media-writing master class on Feb. 6-7 in Los Angeles — you’ll learn to use microcontent — links, subheads, decks and more — to reach even people who don’t read your paragraphs

Avoid writing headlines that get filtered out by Facebook.

Write better listicles with our 6-step list-writing makeover.

Bust the myth of page view time. Help readers understand better, remember longer and enjoy your piece more — in half the time.

Tear down obstacles to reading your post by passing the Palm Test.

Write headlines that rank higher in SEO and entice readers with wit and whimsy.